drilling and tapping barrel for breechplug by hand

[whitebear]

I don't have access to a metal lathe so I will have to drill and tap my breech threads by hand.  Any advice will be appreciated.

[smylee grouch]

If you don't already have the proper sized drills and the taps, don't. It will cost you more to buy those than it would to send it off and have someone equiped to do it. IMHO

[Scota4570]

Get a lathe.  This a good excuse.  Otherwise farm it out. 

Yeah... they did some pretty crude work originally.  I would not do that.  You will not get by with a twist drill and a big old tap.  It will be a mess. 

[Goo]

If you have the use of a lathe you may want to use a boring tool rather than drill. Then the regular tap and a bottoming tap.

[mountainman70]

If you don't already have the proper sized drills and the taps, don't. It will cost you more to buy those than it would to send it off and have someone equiped to do it. IMHO

I will second this commotion. Have done it the way you mention, and know of those that do, and it is a bonifide disaster waiting to happen. Send it to someone these guys recommend,and save the hassle, unless you wanna good excuse to buy a lathe.It is way too squirrely to do with a drill press and bits. Everytime I see it done this way I wanna hide till the job is over.
I will get off my 20 foot high soapbox now. Have a goodun, be safe. Dave

[whitebear]

Thanks for the replies.  Who would you people recommend to do the drilling and tapping on the breech?

[Rolf]

The problem lathes is that the ones you can aford and have room for, weigh less than 200# and have a spindel opening  about 20mm(0.78"). Not possible to get most barrels through the chuck.
The way around this is to use the lathe to make a center drilled cup that fits tightly over the over the breech, feed the drill/tapp through it.
See http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=44837.msg439416#msg439416

Best regards
Rolf

[flehto]

Yrs ago I drilled and tapped a bbl  for a breechplug and did it in my free standing drill press. It was a straight bbl and was positioned vertically  through the center hole in the drill press table and clamped in a good sized "V" block which was clamped to the table after I zeroed in the  bore w/ the spindle using a dial indicator. First  used  the tap drill and then used a flat bottom drill and finally tapped by rotating the spindle by hand and did likewise w/ the bottoming tap. Came out good.

Would I do it again......no, because the bbls I buy have the breechplugs  installed......Fred

[varsity07840]

Thanks for the replies.  Who would you people recommend to do the drilling and tapping on the breech?

Track of the Wolf.

[David R. Pennington]

The original makers made a tool with a center pilot that fit the bore. This doesn't require a lathe but can be turned with a brace. I haven't done this yet, but here is how I would do it. Make a tool of the correct size hole for the tap you will use. File radial teeth in the end like a milling cutter. Drill the end and insert a pilot that fits the bore. Use this to counterbore to the depth you want your breech threads. Now aneal your tap and cut and drill it for a pilot. Make another tap same way with a pilot with taper threads removed to be a bottom tap. Now reharden and temper the taps and the milling cutters and it should be no problem to properly breech a barrel.

[Hungry Horse]

 Way back when I started shooting and building muzzleloaders, I was given, what today I would consider a treasure trove of muzzleloading rifle barrels. Virtually every one of them had been through a house fire, and was rusty, bent, or both. I soaked them good in diesel, and after a while was able to unbreech most of them. It gave me an unusually clear picture of how early guns were breeched by hand. All but the shotguns/fowlers had breech plugs much larger in diameter than we use today, and the barrels were for the most part larger as well. Almost all of them had courser threads than the national fine threads used today as also. Many of the plugs had faces with a slight dome to the plug face, so they would pull up tight against the bore just a fraction of an inch before the threads bottomed out. Out of around twenty barrels, only one showed signs of a leaky compromised breech.
 I think in some cases we are building in our own degree of difficulty.

  Hungry Horse

[ddoyle]

The problem lathes is that the ones you can aford and have room for, weigh less than 200# and have a spindel opening  about 20mm(0.78"). Not possible to get most barrels through the chuck.

For an MT3 or smaller spindle lathe- Take off the compund. Attach a plate in it's place with a fixture of your own cobble. Hold the barrel breech end on this plate. Align the bore with a spud in the chuck. Down at the tail end build up an arrangement to support the barrel that allows it to slide.  Now you can bore and thread the breech end of barrel which will not fit thru the headstock. If you single point it with your tool held in a boring head (or your own home made arrangement)  in the headstock there are alot less forces trying to move the barrel then if you try and cut all of it with a tap.

A real smart guy over in northern europe posted a double barrel build with a clear photo of how to thread a tube which will not fit thru the headstock. 

Even if you do not use the lathe to do the cutting you sure can make a reamer and tap guide with it.   Stella and Harrsion have a book published many times in America which shows you how to make hand breeching tools. There is also a thread on here which sets the gold standard for breeching tool manufacture. Enjoy.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

For years before I owned a good metal lathe, I used my drill press to both drill and tap breeches.  Mine is a bench mounted press, so I bored a hole through the base to allow the barrel to pass.  I removed the taper pin which indexes the table at ninety degrees and rotated the table to vertical, locking it perpendicular to the spindle.  Now I clamped the barrel to the table perfectly vertical, aligned the bore with the spindle, and bored the breech end with the tap drill.  I ground a second bit with a flat shoulder to remove the 82 deg. at the end of the hole.  Then, placing the tap into the chuck and without moving the barrel, and removing the press' belt, I threaded the breech with the tap.  I ground a second tap to cut right to the bottom of the hole.  This system served me well but cannot compare with using a lathe which will take the barrel through the headstock.  You make do with what you have, or find someone else to do it properly.

[Scota4570]

"The problem lathes is that the ones you can aford and have room for, weigh less than 200# and have a spindel opening  about 20mm(0.78")."

My middle sized lathe is a Southbend 10".  The through hole is about 1 1/2".  It is a really good size for general gun work.   It is a WW2 vintage US Navy marked machine. I saw the same machine on a WW2 submarine in a museum.   I paid $600.  I got two chucks, steady, collets and a other goodies.  It is a bench top unit attached to a metal base.  Weight is an important factor to doing quality work, not a disadvantage. Tiny lathes have there place but,  for gun barrel work.   


For this job I would bore the threads in the barrel.  I would then clean them up with a bottoming tap.   

[T*O*F]

Think about the size of your breechplug.  Is it 5/8ths or larger?  What size chuck does your hand drill have?  Has the light bulb come on yet?

[Gaeckle]

Thanks for the replies.  Who would you people recommend to do the drilling and tapping on the breech?

Track of the Wolf.

Log Cabin Shop, Lodi, Ohio.

[James Wilson Everett]

Guys,

Like all of us, I find that using the modern tools to be very difficult.  Really the modern tool are mede to be used with a rigid setup, like a big lathe.  However, the original 18th c tools are truly a dream to use by hand, very much easier to use than the modern taps, dies, drills.
Here is an old topic about breeching a barrel using the original style tools.

Jim

http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=33217.msg318587#msg318587

[Nordnecker]

James, Your knowledge of 18th C tooling and techniques is amazing. I don't think I've ever even seen a simple screw plate for sale. Thank you for your valuable contributions.